Features

David Bacon/Special to the Town Crier
Maria Antonietta Gonzalez and Jose Angel Martinez Gonzalez, two migrants from Carranza, Chiapas, top and bag onions.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit and the county issued shelter-in-place orders, the Los Altos History Museum halted its planned exhibition, “In the Fields of the North/ En los Campos del Norte,” scheduled to open March 19 in the main gallery. The museum placed portions of the display online, available beginning Friday.

The exhibition, which chronicles lives of contemporary migrant farm workers, features the photographs of photojournalist and activist David Bacon and aims to gives viewers a reality check on the food they eat and the lives of the people who harvest it.

Town Crier File Photo
Michele Raffin of Pandemonium Aviaries is looking to fly her birds back east.

The new home for birds at Pandemonium Aviaries is ready. A successful $1 million capital campaign has paid for it. Now comes the next challenge: transporting the birds.

Michele Raffin, founder and CEO of the Los Altos Hills-based sanctuary, needs someone with a private plane to fly her birds – including endangered species like the crowned pigeon of New Guinea – to their new cross-country home in Sylvan Heights, N.C. The largest bird park in the United States, Sylvan Heights has three aviaries ready for the Pandemonium birds.

Newlands

Los Altos resident Allan Newlands has been an ardent environmentalist for decades, a passion he has carried into retirement.

Courtesy of Robin Chapman
The Collings Foundation’s B-17G “Nine-O-Nine” was lost in a crash in Connecticut last October. The photo was taken in May 2019 at Moffett Field. 

For the first time since 1999, iconic World War II aircraft of the “Wings of Freedom” tour will not be visiting Moffett Federal Airfield near Memorial Day. The crash last October of the Collings Foundation’s B-17 Flying Fortress in Connecticut that killed seven people and injured seven others has placed the program on hiatus.

Feliz

Author and former Los Altos resident Mary Feliz aims to transport readers away from the summer heat in her new book set in a Lake Tahoe ski cabin.

“Snowed Under” (Kensington’s Lyrical Press, 2020) is the sixth book in Feliz’s Maggie McDonald Mysteries series, which centers on professional-organizer-turned-amateur-detective Maggie McDonald. The stories in the series are all set in either the Bay Area or locations familiar to local residents, such as Monterey Bay and Lake Tahoe.

Anxiety and phobias are common in dogs and often result from not learning to habituate to novel environments and experiences during the first six to eight months of life.